(Newser)
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Nearly 200 people have been detained after a biker-gang shootout left nine people dead yesterday in Waco, Texas—but police spokesman Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton tells the Waco Tribune-Herald there's still "plenty of room in our jail" for gang members who travel to the city seeking payback. The Waco Police Department said this morning that 192 people were being booked on organized crime charges. Swanton says the deadly brawl, which left at least 18 people injured, began in a restroom at the Twin Peaks restaurant before spilling outside. He says members of five rival gangs had gathered for a meeting at the restaurant; he adds it was the bloodiest crime scene he has seen in 34 years of law enforcement. Some restaurant patrons and employees locked themselves in a freezer to escape the fight, KWTX reports.

Police say officers were already outside the restaurant when the brawl began and some of the armed bikers were shot by police, the AP reports. The bikers allegedly fired on police before they were shot, and police say they prevented further deaths by firing on the bikers. Swanton blames Twin Peaks management for allowing the establishment —the interior of which is now littered with bullet casings—to become a gang hangout. "What happened here today could have been avoided," he tells the Tribune-Herald. "They failed and this is what happened." Swanton says all nine people killed were gang members, as are the 18 injured people, some of whom are being treated for both knife and gunshot wounds.

I wonder how many people would have died if the police hadn't have intervened. Most people, even the brawlers, aren't murderers. A bar fight is often just that, a fight. People fist fight all the time without killing the other person. Cops rarely shoot their weapons with any intent other than killing the person.

K.C.

May 19, 2015 5:37 PM CDT

Shades of "The Postman". You know, that long, boring Kevin Costner movie with a very good, plausible, and scary theme? However badly they perform, I am grateful there is a semblance of law and order in our country--for now. I only pray it will last over my lifetime.